Influence

It is becoming clear that Iraqi Insurgents are attempting to influence elections here in the United States. As the terrorists successfully managed to do to Spain with the Madrid train bombings, the Iraqi Insurgents are trying to do to us here in America, as the mid term elections approach. As was the case with Spain, the goal is to drive voters to elect leaders who take a softer line against the enemy. The Insurgent’s plan seems to essentially be: to ramp up the violence and chaos until our elections, at which point Americans elect less hawk-ish leaders because, as OBL preaches, America is really a paper tiger (Bill Clinton/Mogadishu). In the next phase of the plan, the decidedly less-hawkish new leaders remove American troops from Iraq on an accelerated timetable, before any sort of friendly Iraqi government could ever sustain itself. And Finally, as was the case with the Tet Offensive, the inferior force achieves a kind of victory by propaganda rather than military might. I'd like to think that we have learned from the Tet Offensive, Mogadishu, as well as from the Madrid train bombings and at the very least when voting, we bear in mind that the Insurgents are hoping that the party in favor of an unhealthily accelerated withdrawal from Iraq win a majority of seats in Congress this November.